The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

A Ukrainian court applied for the first time punishment for a coup detat.

The criminal collegium of the Chernigiv oblast court finished to consider the first case of preparing a coup detat in Ukraine. Valentin Bulakhov, a 47-year old dweller of a forest hamlet, and Yuri Petrovskiy, a 42-year old dweller of Zaporozhye, were considered guilty in a complot aimed at the destruction of the constitutional regime in the country, public appeals to this, distributing printed matter under a collusion with a group of other persons. These articles of the Ukrainian Criminal Code are applied for the first time since the foundation of the autonomous Ukraine. Bulakhov pleaded guilty and was condemned to 5 years of incarceration conditionally. Petrovskiy, who continues to state that the collusion was aimed at disclosure of the USS agent in the public organization of former army officers, was condemned to six years in strict regime colony with the confiscation of his property and deprivation of his officers rank.

The provocateurs task allegedly was to discredit the officer organization and preventing its activities in protecting civil rights of servicemen and their families. As to other participants of the event, the criminal cases were stopped. The criminal case against still another plotter, Aleksandr Kozlobaev, a Russian citizen, the head of permanently working organization Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was separated from the other cases since the suspect is being searched.